BEULAVILLE – No wonder East Duplin’s volleyball team is undefeated. The Panthers have two liberos.

OK, really they only have one – 2012 The Daily News player of the year Carson Williams.

But ask coach Liz Turner exactly how she would define junior Morgan Sanderson’s position and you get a quizzical answer.

“It’s a very weird position,” she said. “She’s kind of like a secondary libero, but she actually stays on the court more than Carson because she has to come out in the rotation. Morgan never has to come out. She’s kind of like our camouflage libero.”

Or, to put it another way, it’s like a baseball team having both a left-hander and right-handed pitcher on the mound at the same time.

Or a football team with two middle linebackers.

And while East Duplin has Williams and several big hitters, led by Makayla Byrd and Amber Hall, Sanderson is perhaps the least obvious, but nonetheless key element, in why the Panthers (18-9, 9-0) could polish off an unbeaten regular season tonight when they play host to East Central 2-A Conference foe North Brunswick (2-16, 2-7) on senior night.

“She’s one of the only girls that never comes off the floor,” Turner said. “She plays all the way around. Games (against teams like perennial 1-A power) Pender, we’d have really struggled without her if she’d been sick or not been there.”

And to think, the 16-year-old Sanderson wasn’t all that sure about the sport when she first took it up in middle school.

“I was kind of iffy to begin with,” she recalled before practice recently. “But after a while I started liking it more. And I weren’t going to play in high school, but I tried out and I just loved it.”

Sanderson is a two-sport athlete. She plays softball – second base for the Panthers – and volleyball, which she took up as her second sport. Volleyball wasn’t easy, she said, but “with a lot of practice, it helped and I got better.”

Sanderson, who is in her second year on varsity in volleyball, enjoys both sports, although they are clearly different. Softball is slower, but “you have to think fast,” Sanderson said.

And volleyball?

“Volleyball’s a lot faster and it’s just more intense,” she said.

It’s also arguably the ultimate team sport for girls, a viewpoint with which Sanderson agreed, saying “probably” no girls’ sport requires more communication.

“Even if you’re not working together we still have to come together as a team and be able to work through it even if we are behind,” she said. “We just have to have a leader on the team and pick someone up if they’re down.”

Page 2 of 3 - And that, Turner said, is one area where Sanderson excels.

“She’s a great leader on the floor and off the floor,” Turner said. “She’s probably one of the most coachable players I’ve ever coached in my life. You tell her one thing, she’s fine. You don’t get any disrespect if she’s having a good game, bad game.”

While Sanderson’s position is hard to define given she’s all over the court during a match, she calls herself a passer first, and except for a brief time at setter as a freshman that’s where she’s been during her three years at East Duplin.

But don’t ask the soft-spoken Sanderson to evaluate her talents as a volleyball player.

“Um, I’m not very good at that. I think I’ve come a long way from my freshman year. I was kind of iffy about it to begin with because I wasn’t sure I was good or not,” she said, “but I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better. That helps my confidence.”

One reason for her improvement, Turner said, is she’s worked at it.

“Heart and hustle is the first thing. You tell her what to do fundamentally and she works at it,” Turner said. “I remember at the beginning of the season I thought she was doing perfectly fine, but she’s that athlete that comes and says, ‘Coach, can I come hit some extra (with JVs)? Can I stay after?’

“That’s what makes her a better athlete. She goes the extra mile. She goes hard in practice. That’s what make her good all-around.”

And one reason why East Duplin is on the verge of an undefeated season, which Sanderson attributes to several factors, including how much the Panthers have improved – “We’ve come a long ways,” she said – and how close the players are to each other.

“We have good chemistry on the team. Everyone gets along with everyone. Most time it’s broke apart with seniors and juniors, but really we just all come together and have fun together. Everyone is friends with everyone,” she said.

While she didn’t want to look too far ahead, Sanderson said it was a “big goal” for the team to not only earn a berth in the playoffs – that has long been assured – but a trip to Raleigh and the NCHSAA 2-A finals.

“We’ve actually talked about winning the championship,” Sanderson said. “We talked about that over the summer and how cool it would be and how much fun it would be to just be able to go there.”